


Rage and Glory

by Sholio



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Ghosts, poltergeist!Meredith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 05:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12125733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: When Yondu took Peter on board the Eclector, he picked up someone (or something) else, too.





	Rage and Glory

**Author's Note:**

> For my h/c bingo square "haunted", from a suggestion on Tumblr. [Also posted on Tumblr.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/165469225953/oooh-yondumeredith-haunted)

Yondu didn't remember, after, when or how he first noticed her. It was a thing that happened slowly, over a number of years, as the Terran boy grew from a scrawny child with a mop of tousled reddish hair, to an equally scrawny adolescent, gangly with oversized hands and feet, in the way of half-grown humanoids the galaxy over.

He didn't figure out who or what she was, until awhile later. He didn't notice if she came on board with the boy.

But she was there ... somehow. A glimpse of blonde hair, out of the corner of his eye, whisking around a corner. A fragment of song, one of Quill's Terran songs, hummed in a woman's sweet voice. A scent of vanilla perfume.

She didn't like him. He found his things rearranged, thought at first the boys were messing with him. Felt a slap, more than once, that made him turn his head, though it didn't really hurt and the sting faded in seconds -- after he knocked the kid flat in their fight training, after he sent the boy out for his first time pickpocketing solo.

Found wires pulled out on his M-ship one time, dangling from under the console. He crouched to look at it, sorting through possibilities, keeping his face still. Could be he had a wannabe mutineer on board, somebody who thought knocking off the cap'n would be a ticket to an instant promotion rather than an arrow through the throat.

Could be it had to do with the bruise he'd left on the boy's cheekbone two days ago, after Quill backtalked once too often and wouldn't do what he was told. Couldn't be having that shit on his ship. This wasn't a nursery school on Xandar; this here was a mercenary ship.

Now the bruise was fading to browns and yellows, standing out on Quill's abnormally pale skin. The kid had slunk around the Eclector for the last two days, doing his chores sullenly but obediently, and the only words Yondu'd gotten out of him was "Yes, Cap'n" and "No, Cap'n".

It shouldn't have left the bitter taste that it did in the back of his throat, a taste that was all too much like the stink of the slave pens.

And now this. He cupped the wires in his hand. Wondered, for a moment, if the boy could've tried to have his revenge, if the boy really hated him that much.

But ... no. Murder wasn't Peter's style. Kid was soft; never really had it in him.

"You know, I could'a had the kid with me right now," he said quietly to empty air. "Could'a taken him out with me, distracted by his chatter, didn't even bother to check the equipment. You want that?"

The air was silent and oddly heavy.

"Look," Yondu said to that strange, heavy silence. "I know you hate me. Ain't given you no reason to love me, I guess. It do any good if I ask you what you want?"

With a suddenness that made him flinch, the M-ship's speakers began to play music. It wasn't loud, but he recognized it. Early on, when it started to get obvious how much the kid relied on his music to calm him down, Yondu had cloned both his music holders -- the one he always played, and the one in the box his mommy gave him, which was a simple matter of scanning it through the wrapping -- just in case anything ever happened to either of them.

The speakers were playing "Bring It On Home."

He laughed softly to himself, with a bitterly ironic edge to it.

"Yeah, you wanna go home. 'Course you do." He bowed his head over the torn-out wiring, piecing it back together with his fingertips -- a delicacy, he thought, that his hands were capable of, but he hadn't shown much of that to the kid, or anyone else. 

"Don't we all," he said absently as he worked. "Kid wants to go home too. Never shuts up about it. An' you prob'ly want me to take him to that no-good daddy of his, but you know what? Ain't gonna do it. Every last one of them other kids is dead. You want your kid's bones thrown on the pile, let's just take 'im there."

The sting was half expected, like a whip lowered in anticipated punishment, except this only hurt for seconds across the side of his face. Right where he'd hit Peter. Like he had any doubt what all of this was about.

"Don't believe me?" he asked, smiling grimly as he twisted two wires together. Wasn't a pretty patch job, but it'd do. He'd have Kraglin come up later and solder it proper, say the ship got banged up on a job and he'd just now noticed. "There's a pile of bones, little kid bones. Saw it with my own eyes. I know I'm an asshole, ma'am, but I hate to break it to you -- your kid's daddy is a bigger one."

The music had faded out as he was talking until he could no longer hear it. Yondu went ahead and finished putting his ship back together, closed the panel, and stood up, dusting off his hands.

"Guess I could do better," he said to the air, and wondered if he was imagining the heavy feeling, as if the ship itself was listening to him. "Could do a lot of things better. Guess I ain't really done none of it right. But --" He stopped there, swallowing the explanation -- the justification -- before it left his mouth. He didn't know how to do this, didn't even _want_ to do this, but it wasn't like he could say that to the kid's dead momma. He did have a little scrap of decency or two. Enough to stop his tongue.

"So maybe I could try a little bit harder," he told the silence. "An' maybe you stop bein' a hazard by tryin' to get me killed. Looks like we all stuck with each other here, you an' me an' the kid, so you think you can do that?"

No answer, of course. Was probably talking to empty air and his own guilty conscience.

 

***

 

He took the boy out the next day, in his very own personal ship (checked over thoroughly by Kraglin beforehand, not that Yondu told him why), and let Quill take the controls, talked him through a full landing in atmosphere.

It was the first time he'd seen Quill's grin in two days, quick and bright, eyes sparkling above the incriminating colors on his cheek.

'Course, when they got back to the ship, he went into his quarters to find his pillow dunked in the crapper.

"Right, yeah, I get it," he said, pulling it out and shaking it off. "It don't make up for it, an' you know what? _I know that._ I ain't stupid. An' I wasn't lyin' to you about the kid's piece of shit dad, any more than I was lyin' about the rest of it."

He went down a little while later to the storage deck where the boy slept, away from the rest of the crew, in what was technically a storage locker with a lock-strip Yondu had given him to shut the door an' keep out the riff-raff. These days the boy didn't lock the door much, and it was open tonight, given Yondu a glimpse of a ginger mop of hair and a scrawny shape curled up under a pile of blankets and furs.

Somewhere, a woman was singing very quietly, and Yondu saw the boy's shoulders relax.

_"... I'm high on believing  
That you're in love with me."_

He sat down outside the locker, his back against the wall, and quietly went through his end-of-day routine with his weapons -- checked the arrow, made sure the knives were clean and sharp and accessible, that the little blaster up his sleeve was fully charged and in good working order -- and all the while, listened to the woman sing.

She didn't seem to mind him being there. Or at least if she did, she didn't make him leave.

**Author's Note:**

> So my general idea is that Peter's childhood end up being somewhat better in this 'verse. And Yondu has long conversations with Meredith late at night, frequently about Peter, that she may or may not be listening to.
> 
> She reluctantly starts liking him after awhile, because he really _is_ trying.


End file.
